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Postal Inspectors Reported to be Collecting License Plate Info, Agents Deny Broad Surveillancehttp://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2015/03/postal-inspectors-reported-collecting-license-plate-info-agents-deny-broad-surveillance/
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2015/03/postal-inspectors-reported-collecting-license-plate-info-agents-deny-broad-surveillance/#commentsSat, 14 Mar 2015 14:53:44 +0000http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=1021593The Truth About Cars has followed the use of license plate recognition and storage technology by local law enforcement agencies, a practice that has raised alarms from civil liberties activists because of constitutional concerns over broad surveillance and the ability to reconstruct one’s movements from license plate data. Now it appears that United States Postal Inspection […]

The Truth About Cars has followed the use of license plate recognition and storage technology by local law enforcement agencies, a practice that has raised alarms from civil liberties activists because of constitutional concerns over broad surveillance and the ability to reconstruct one’s movements from license plate data. Now it appears that United States Postal Inspection Service, the USPS’ own law enforcement agency has also, at least at one post office in Colorado, been collecting similar data from drivers. Though the device had apparently been operating for at least a few months, within an hour of Chris Halsne, of Denver’s KDVR television station, inquiring from the postal inspectors about a Golden, Colorado post office that had a camera positioned to record drivers’ faces and license plates, triggered as they left the post office property, the in-ground camera was removed.

A postal customer first noticed the camera, hidden in a utility box, back in November, and it appears to have been active through the busy Christmas mailing season and into January. Management at the post office where the camera was discovered told KDVR that they were not aware of the camera and that it wasn’t part of the building’s normal security system.

When asked by KDVR, the Postal Inspection Service would not discuss their reasons for surveilling Denver postal customers, but acknowledged their use of cameras. Without saying so specifically, a statement from U.S. Postal Inspector Pamela Durkee implied that the camera discovered at the Denver post office was part of some kind of ongoing investigation, not constitutionally dubious random spying on Americans. “(We) do not engage in routine or random surveillance. Cameras are deployed for law enforcement or security purposes, which may include the security of our facilities, the safety of our customers and employees, or for criminal investigations. Employees of the Postal Inspection Service are sworn to uphold the United States Constitution, including protecting the privacy of the American public.”

The Postal Inspection Service is one of the oldest federal law enforcement agencies in the United States and it has a pretty good record of protecting both those who carry our mail and our privacy. To protect postal employees and the stamps, money, postal money orders and valuables they handle, most post offices in the United States have at least as many security cameras installed as the average bank does. Those cameras, though, are as visible as their purpose is.

Not long ago, I was mailing a package and while standing in line noticed a sign saying “Refrain From Cellphone Use While Being Serviced”. Struck by the double-entendre, I stepped forward to take a photo of the sign with my phone. A woman standing behind me started to freak out about her privacy and at first I didn’t know what she was talking about and then realized she thought I was taking a “selfie”, with her in the background.

A little annoyed, I told her that I wasn’t taking her picture but that I happen to write and take photographs professionally and that nobody has any expectation of privacy in a public place. Then I counted off the number of security cameras recording us at that very moment, at least six that I could see, which didn’t seem to bother her at all. On the way out of the building, I counted another five cameras. At least at that particular post office location, your every movement is recorded from even before you open the door.

As I said, you have no expectation of privacy in public places. Still, we live in a country that long ago decided that the government has no business doing broad surveillance of the public. Criminal investigations, not to mention those involving national security, are undoubtedly sensitive, but at a time when Americans already have concerns about broad surveillance of electronic communications by the National Security Agency, it would probably behoove the postal inspectors to be a little more forthcoming with the purpose of their camera in Denver. Ripping out a camera when it becomes a news story and a boilerplate statement intoning on the moral integrity of postal inspectors doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in that integrity.

]]>http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2015/03/postal-inspectors-reported-collecting-license-plate-info-agents-deny-broad-surveillance/feed/50New York Times: Police Use of Civil Forfeiture Targets Cars, Criminals Perhaps Less Sohttp://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/11/new-york-times-police-use-civil-forfeiture-targets-cars-criminals-perhaps-less/
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/11/new-york-times-police-use-civil-forfeiture-targets-cars-criminals-perhaps-less/#commentsWed, 12 Nov 2014 16:39:14 +0000http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=944385Perhaps if it was published somewhere else it might have been dismissed as a libertarian rant, but an article in the New York Times about police abuse of civil forfeiture laws, where innocent property owners face the task of proving that their property hasn’t been used illegally (something that seems at odds with the American […]

Perhaps if it was published somewhere else it might have been dismissed as a libertarian rant, but an article in the New York Times about police abuse of civil forfeiture laws, where innocent property owners face the task of proving that their property hasn’t been used illegally (something that seems at odds with the American concept of innocent until proven guilty) is getting a lot of attention. Video of seminars teaching cops and prosecutors how to seize private property have surfaced and they make it seem like law enforcement is less concerned with, well, law enforcement than they are with taking your stuff. Instructions like, “If in doubt… take it!” don’t make it seem like justice is a concern. What was intended by legislators as a means to go after the tools of illegal trades has become a method of padding budgets, buying cop toys and, in what would surely be seen by prosecutors as at the very least a conflict of interest if it was in the private sector, paying the salaries of prosecutors who handle civil forfeiture cases. The Times story revels disturbing practices like wish lists of property to be seized. High on the lists are cars. Can you prove that your car wasn’t used for a crime? The government wins 96% of civil forfeiture cases.

Comments made on at one of those seminars by Harry Connelly Jr., Las Cruces, New Mexico’s city attorney have prompted the description of “policing for profit”.

In one seminar, captured on video in September, Harry S. Connelly Jr., the city attorney of Las Cruces, N.M., called them “little goodies.” And then Mr. Connelly described how officers in his jurisdiction could not wait to seize one man’s “exotic vehicle” outside a local bar.

“A guy drives up in a 2008 Mercedes, brand new,” he explained. “Just so beautiful, I mean, the cops were undercover and they were just like ‘Ahhhh.’ And he gets out and he’s just reeking of alcohol. And it’s like, ‘Oh, my goodness, we can hardly wait.’ ”

If that attitude raises your blood pressure, don’t watch these other civil forfeiture seminar videos at Buzzfeed. Prosecutors can even get continuing legal education credit for attending what are advertised as “entertaining” classes on how lawmen and lawwomen can legally steal your property. At one of those CLE courses, Mercer County, New Jersey prosecutor Sean McMurtry teaches his colleagues how to overcome the fact that the owner of a car is innocent, that in fact criminals don’t own most of the cars they seize, and to use a policy of “If in doubt… take it!”

]]>http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/11/new-york-times-police-use-civil-forfeiture-targets-cars-criminals-perhaps-less/feed/86Statewatch: EU Has Plans for Police to Remotely Stop Carshttp://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/02/statewatch-eu-has-plans-for-police-to-remotely-stop-cars/
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/02/statewatch-eu-has-plans-for-police-to-remotely-stop-cars/#commentsMon, 03 Feb 2014 11:30:08 +0000http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=731122A privacy advocacy group is reporting that European police forces are working on a remote stopping system to be fitted to cars at the factory that would allow authorities to deactivate any vehicle. Leaked documents reveal plans to implement the system by 2020. The idea is to eliminate the need for high speed chases or […]

A privacy advocacy group is reporting that European police forces are working on a remote stopping system to be fitted to cars at the factory that would allow authorities to deactivate any vehicle. Leaked documents reveal plans to implement the system by 2020. The idea is to eliminate the need for high speed chases or tire-spiking strips. The documents were leaked by Statewatch, a watchdog group dedicated to monitoring police powers, state surveillance and civil liberties in the EU.

“Cars on the run have proven to be dangerous for citizens. Criminal offenders (from robbery to a simple theft) will take risks to escape after a crime. In most cases the police are unable to chase the criminal due to the lack of efficient means to stop the vehicle safely. This project starts with the knowledge that insufficient tools are available to be used as part of a proportionate response. This project will work on a technological solution that can be a “built in standard” for all cars that enter the European market.”

Other items on ENLETS’ agenda includes improved automatic license plate recognition technology and intelligence sharing. That agenda has reportedly been approved by the EU’s Standing Committee on Operational Cooperation on Internal Security, known as Cosi, and that it has the support of senior British Home Office civil servants and police officers.

]]>http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/02/statewatch-eu-has-plans-for-police-to-remotely-stop-cars/feed/13ACLU Says License Plate Scanning Widespread, With Few Controls On Collected Datahttp://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/07/aclu-says-license-plate-scanning-widespread-with-few-controls-on-collected-data/
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/07/aclu-says-license-plate-scanning-widespread-with-few-controls-on-collected-data/#commentsFri, 19 Jul 2013 14:49:01 +0000http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=495816TTAC has recently addressed the issue of police using scanning technology to read license plates and then store their street locations. When the story broke, it centered on a few counties in Northern California, but the American Civil Liberties Union has just released documents that show that the practice is widespread across the United States […]

TTAC has recently addressed the issue of police using scanning technology to read license plates and then store their street locations. When the story broke, it centered on a few counties in Northern California, but the American Civil Liberties Union has just released documents that show that the practice is widespread across the United States and that few of the police agencies or private companies that are scanning license plates and storing that data, making it possible to retroactively track drivers, have any meaningful rules in place to protect drivers’ privacy. There are few controls on how the collected data is accessed and used. The documents reveal that many police departments keep the information on millions of people’s locations for years, or even indefinitely, whether or not they are suspected of a crime. Data on tens of millions of drivers is being logged and stored.

ACLU Staff Attorney Catherine Crump, the report’s lead author said, “The spread of these scanners is creating what are, in effect, government location tracking systems recording the movements of many millions of innocent Americans in huge databases. We don’t object to the use of these systems to flag cars that are stolen or belong to fugitives, but these documents show a dire need for rules to make sure that this technology isn’t used for unbridled government surveillance.”

With the help of chapters in 38 states, the ACLU compiled 26,000 pages of documents based on nearly 600 Freedom of Information Act requests submitted to federal, state and local agencies, asking how those agencies use license plate readers and how they manage the data collected. Approximately 300 police departments’ policies were reviewed. According to the civil liberties group, only a minuscule fraction of the scanned plates are used to solve crimes. In Maryland, for example, only 47 out of every million plates scanned (0.005%) were even potentially associated with auto theft or a person wanted for a serious crime.

The issue is not restricted to government agencies. There’s no expectation of privacy in public and for-profit companies can also set up scanners on vehicles or in fixed locations, also without having to protect how that information is used. A firm named Vigilant Solutions has over 800 million registration plate location records. Over 2,200 police agencies, including the Dept. of Homeland Security, pay Vigilant Solutions for access to their data.

The ACLU has suggested a number of specific policies regarding license plate scanning to make sure that nobody’s rights are being infringed. Those recommendations include: that a reasonable suspicion that a crime has taken place must exist before police can examine the information, unless there is a specific legitimate reason for record retention, the scanning data should be automatically deleted within weeks, or days if possible, and people should have the right to know if their cars’ location information has been stored in a law enforcement data base.

]]>http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/07/aclu-says-license-plate-scanning-widespread-with-few-controls-on-collected-data/feed/53Would License Plate Reader Jammers Work And Be Legal?http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/06/would-license-plate-reader-jammers-work-and-be-legal/
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/06/would-license-plate-reader-jammers-work-and-be-legal/#commentsSun, 30 Jun 2013 14:00:11 +0000http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=493635The news that the police departments in California routinely scan and record license plates to create a database that can be used to retroactively track any driver’s motions and activities broke at political and civil liberty websites and is now percolating through the autoblogosphere. Jack Baruth wrote about it here at TTAC yesterday. Jalopnik has […]

The news that the police departments in California routinely scan and record license plates to create a database that can be used to retroactively track any driver’s motions and activities broke at political and civil liberty websites and is now percolating through the autoblogosphere. Jack Baruth wrote about it here at TTAC yesterday. Jalopnik has picked up the story today. Like the current issue over NSA monitoring of electronic communication involves balancing national security with Americans’ privacy from government intrusion, recording and tracking license plates can be a useful tool in solving crime but it also seems contrary to American values and rights like freedom of motion and freedom from random surveillance without probable cause. Still, if I had a vote on the matter, since law enforcement in this country hasn’t exactly had a sterling record in protecting civil liberties, I wouldn’t trust them with this technology. Who knows how the political system will eventually deal with this news, but in the meantime remember that for every technology there is some way to defeat it. In this case, it might even be legal.

The law here in Michigan, and I assume it’s the same in most U.S. states, is that the registration information on your license plate has to be clearly legible and free of obstructions. Since people have been ticketed for license plate frames, tinted covers, and laser filters, putting any kind of cover over the plate would be legally problematic, or at least expose you to a traffic stop. I guess it hinges on how your particular cop and judge is going to define “clearly legible” and “obstruction”. It seems to me, though, that those legal terms have to do with human beings so you might be able to get away with some kind of polarized or interference filter that would mess with a digital camera but still be completely legible to a human. Still, as I said, putting anything directly over the plate might still get you a ticket.

Likewise, trying to use some kind of active lighting device that would blind the plate readers might also run afoul of statutes. I suppose there might even be some case law on using a device that interferes with traffic enforcement cameras. Actually, I’d be shocked if the traffic enforcement and municipal revenue industry jurisdictions didn’t already make that illegal. So lasers and LEDs trying to blind the cops’ cameras directly are probably not a good idea.

“MPH” doesn’t stand for Miles Per Hour here. It’s “Mobile Plate Hunter”. Doesn’t the use of the word “hunter” speak volumes?

Mulling this over, I thought about some of my own experience taking digital photos of cars (and license plates). I’m not a particularly great photographer, mostly a point ‘n shoot guy, but over the past three years I’ve taken tens of thousands of stereo pairs for the 3D content at Cars In Depth so it’s not like I’ve never tried to get a photo of a car’s license plate. Actually, once at a Camaro show I spent much of the day just shooting vanity plates. As I thought about jamming a plate reader and started going through Michigan state laws about registration plates and what’s legal and what’s not, if you’ll pardon the phrase, a light bulb went on. It’s possible that the very solution may exist in the Michigan Vehicle Code.

Every car in Michigan has to display its registration plate on the back of the car in, as mentioned, a clearly legible manner. Older cars that don’t have them as standard equipment are grandfathered in and exempt, but if your car was built after the federal motor vehicle safety standards were first introduced in the 1960s, your car must have a white light that illuminates your license plate at night, rendering it clearly legible at 50 feet behind the car.

(2) Either a tail lamp or a separate lamp shall be constructed and placed so as to illuminate with a white light the rear registration plate and render it clearly legible from a distance of 50 feet to the rear. A tail lamp or tail lamps, together with any separate lamp for illuminating the rear registration plate, shall be wired so as to be lighted whenever the head lamps or auxiliary driving lamps are lighted.

257.689 Clearance and marker lamps and reflectors; color.

Sec. 689.

(c) All lighting devices and reflectors mounted on the rear of any vehicle shall display or reflect a red color, except the stop light or other signal device, which may be red or amber, and except that the light illuminating the license plate shall be white.

So the law here says that I have to have a white light that illuminates my rear license plate that makes it clearly legible from a distance of fifty feet. Note that the law does not say that I can’t use a light that’s bright enough to make it visible at even longer distances. How bright my license plate lamp (and a “lamp” can have more than lighting element) can be does not appear to be regulated, provided it meets the minimum standards.

One of the things that I’ve learned shooting and processing those photos is that the human vision system is so much more sophisticated than even the most advanced digital or chemical camera. Your eyes can move in their sockets, your head can swivel and in real life your brain has terrabytes more information to work with than with photography, still or motion. What causes distortion or visual confusion in photography is not even noticed in real vision.

The above photograph of the ’63 split-window Corvette coupe was taken at the General Motors Heritage Center a couple of years ago and has not been modified other than cropping. I hadn’t yet learned that unless you’re using auxiliary lighting, when shooting in a large room, it’s best to turn off the flash and either let the cameras autoexpose or use manual settings. Otherwise, the flash ends up lighting the near field and everything in the background is dark. Also, when you use a flash you run the risk of the cars’ safety reflectors shining the light back at the camera, washing out part of the image.

As you can see from the photo, the effect also works with reflective license plates. The law says that I have to have a white light for my license plate that makes it visible from 50 feet. The law doesn’t say that I can’t make that light so bright that bouncing off the reflective surface of the license plate it would blind a digital camera. It also doesn’t say anything about light that is beyond the visible spectrum, like infrared. Since at least some of the plate readers use IR cameras, mixing in some IR with white doesn’t seem to me to violate the law. Actually, if the cameras work in the infrared spectrum, perhaps an array of heating elements that sufficiently warm the plate might defeat them.

It occurs to me that strobing the light at the right frequency might further interfere with the plate reader’s frame rate, but except for turn indicators, flashing lights are generally prohibited on non-emergency vehicles. As a matter of fact, most exterior lighting not used for road illumination or as otherwise required by law is prohibited. So undercarriage neon lights, or a neon license plate frame must not be illuminated when on the road. I’m not sure about coach lamps on broughams and landaus are quite legal then, but this would be another reason why an active system of additional lights trying to blind the cameras would be legally problematic.

That’s why using a super bright license plate light (or lights, the law doesn’t say you can’t have more than one) strikes me as an elegant solution. It’s not only legal, but you’re using equipment that the law says you must have on your car.

Please join in the conversation. Those with expertise in the law, optics and digital photography are particularly encouraged to share their informed opinions.

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can dig deeper at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS